SHERRYBURGERS

Another one from beloved Peg. From a section entitled Last Minute Suppers: OR THIS IS THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE. According to dearest Peg, the recipes in this section are for those times when … there you are again at quarter to six, with your hat still on, staring at a pound of minced steak or a tin of tuna fish. Lady, if I were EVER home at 5.45, I would thank my lucky stars and be able to cook a flipping roast dinner! This is not the time I would classify as needing Last Minute Suppers! Anyway, I get her point – you can frequently find me getting home at 7.10pm and staring miserably into a fridge containing one bendy carrot and my cupboard containing a huge tub of custard and a tin of BRISLING…

And who can resist cooking with sherry? Not I! (An exception to the rule being the noble sherry egg)…

SHERRYBURGERS

“Make patties from 1lb of seasoned minced beef. Brown them in a little butter in a strong pan, then put them in a baking dish. Mix and heat in the same pan:
1 tin condensed mushroom soup
1/4 cup of sherry
And pour it over the patties. Then bake them at 375 for 15 minutes”

NOTES

whilst cooking it goes through a phase where it looks exactly like TRIPE! Fear not, it does shortly thicken into a nice creamy sauce within about three minutes and stopped my squeals of fear…

Appetising so far isn’t it?

Let’s have a linguistic aside from wikipedia. Linguistically, the UK is notable (as with Japan) in that the term “burger” can refer simply to the patty, be it meat or vegetarian. So, if you are cooking a burger without the bun in, let’s say, one of our O.N.A.Nite territories, you would not call that a burger? I suspect it would just be a patty. I am afraid I will simply have to continue calling them burgers because patty sounds a bit too much like “panty”… (a term which seems far more acceptable to non-UK ears). Anyway, here’s a terrible picture of the finished dish… (LAST MINUTE, guys!)

Let’s see. What else to say. Well, as I was cooking for myself before dashing out for an afternoon appointment, I lessened the amounts: well, I used 2 ready formed burgers (patties!), half a tin of condensed mushroom soup, but the full 1/4 cup of sherry, because really, who can be bothered with 1/8th of a cup of sherry?

I think I would make the sherry/mushroom sauce again but it was WIERD eating it with a burger, so I’d pour it over CHOPS (thus cutting out the slightly annoying baking bit as you could do a chop through in the pan and save on WASHING UP. Seriously, one day I’m going to write a cookbook called ONE PAN: maximise taste and minimise the sodding washing up). The baking element in here could probably have been done without, providing your burgers weren’t too thick. The soup and sherry is just being heated, rather than requiring much ‘cooking’…

CONCLUSION
Peg says: now take your hat off. But given I was making this before dashing out, feel free to put your hat on, grab your keys, down the 1/4 cup of sherry you poured out for yourself in your Moomin mug and feel comfortably full. Whilst the use of condensed soup feels like such a cheat, it really IS quite satisfying that you didn’t have to faff about making e.g bechemel or whatever. Good old Peg.

Rårakor med Gråslök

This recipe is from a 1969 Time Life series of books ‘Foods of the World’, of which I have The Cooking of Scandinavia. It’s a sophisticated work, and doesn’t shrink from challenging recipes and obscure ingredients. I like this approach, rather than the approach sometimes  encountered with books on foreign cuisine where the author excludes recipes when they think that the ingredients will be hard to find. In English the dish is translated to ‘Lacy Potato Pancakes with Chives’.

So this is basically grated potato with chives in, fried. Is this a rosti?  It was really really tasty, and I ate it with some fried eggs for breakfast this morning. The only comment I have is that it would have benefited from more chives. Always, these vintage recipes let me down with their timid seasoning!

The ‘pancakes’ looked like this:

Conclusion – perfect weekend breakfast food.

Texas Hash

Another recipe from the publications dug from the family collection and delivered to my grubby hands. (I wash them before cooking – promise!) Words are superfluous regarding the design and tone of this leaflet, from February 1966, suffice to say it was issued by the Rice Council for Market Development, then based in Notting Hill, which appears to have been an arm of the US rice industry.

Texas Hash

For 2 people

1oz margarine or dripping
4oz onions, sliced
2oz sweet green peppers, de-seeded and sliced
6oz raw minced beef
3oz ripe tomatoes, skinned and sliced
6oz rice, cooked
¼ level teaspoon chilli powder
½ level teaspoon salt
1/8 pint stock/water

Heat fat in a saucepan, and cook the onion and green pepper over gentle heat until soft. Add the meat and cook, stirring frequently, until colour changes to brown. Stir in the tomatoes, rice, chilli powder, salt and stock. Cover and heat gently until thoroughly hot and stock absorbed. Toss lightly with a fork and serve.

Notes

• I used bacon fat for dripping as I had some leftover.
• I skinned the tomato in boiling water which I then used to make the stock – simple!
• I halved the recipe.

Conclusion

A great need-to-shop-but-can’t-be-bothered, one-pot dish – not much of anything is needed and nothing fancy. I used fresh tomatoes as specified but tinned would be more than adequate. It also has plenty of veg and is therefore bordering on current dietary guidelines.  The salt content is also rather high, and perhaps using oil, instead of a solid fat would be preferable. It benefited taste-wise from some black pepper and a tiny squeeze of tomato paste, because, despite the chili, it was rather bland and sweet. Some chopped parsley or a squeeze of lemon juice would serve the same purpose.

Hashed by Elly

Parsley Scones

I was recently given three industry-sponsored recipe leaflets, one of which is dated 1966 and I assume the others are of a similar age. 

This one was written by Audrey Ellis, a British cookery writer who wrote 65 books, including Colourful Entertaining: Cooking for the Hostess, Easy Freeze Cooking and Cooking for your Outline: Slimming in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. I know it’s partly to do with the currently crowded market, but I love the versatility of cookery writers of the past. This recipe is from the ‘Substantial Snacks’ section.

Parsley Scones

8oz self-raising flour
2oz margarine or cooking fat
1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped
2oz streaky bacon chopped and fried
¼ pint milk

Sift flour into a bowl.rub in fat til mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add parsley and bacon. Mix into a soft dough but not sticky dough with milk. Turn onto a floured board, knead lightly into an 8 inch round, about ¾ inch thick. Transfer to a greased baking sheet and score into 8 triangles with back of knife. Brush with milk. Bake towards top of oven, at electric 450 degrees, gas mark 8 for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool slightly, break scones apart and serve warm with butter.

Notes

• There is quite a bit of prep involved, for scones – chop the parsley, fry the bacon…
• The last time I made scones I forgot to score the top and ended up with just one massive scone. Not this time!

Conclusion

Perfect first-meal-of-the-day-at-the-weekend food. I wasn’t sure how these would turn out as my scone guru informs me not to overknead but the texture was fantastic – a very thin, almost biscuit-y crust with soft, springy interior.  I also thought I might have overcooked the bacon as I cooked it to the crisp, dark stage bu the variation in texture was perfect. They don’t need any extra seasoning either – the bacon/parsley combination was savoury but not overpowering. Not sure how to store these, considering they contain meat and a large amount of flour (i.e. would probably go stale in the fridge). It seems best to freeze them and defrost and toast as necessary.

Sconed By Elly

Spicy Lamb Hot Pot

Recipe three is from 500 Recipes for Casserole Dishes by Catherine Kirkpartick (this impression is from 1969). Published by Paul Hamlyn the book is from a series of ‘500 Dishes for..’ books, I also have 500 Recipes for Mixers and Blenders in my collection, and amongst the others published were 500 Recipes for Slimmers,and 500 Recipes for Home-made Wines and Drinks. Both the books I have are somewhat battle-weary, yellowing glue and musty dry pages – these books look like they’ve been well used, and indeed the contents are mainly decent standard recipes – good on their own but also with a lot of potential for improvisation and ingredient substitution – a quality that usually means a book will be referred to often.

I was initially hunting for a vegetable stew to make but none were quite what I was looking for, indeed a lot of the recipes in the ‘Vegetable, Egg and Cheese Casseroles’ chapter would not pass muster with any vegetarians, as they involve loads of meat. The picture below, if you can make it out shows a few of the so-called ‘vegetable’ casseroles. The ones that didn’t include meat mainly involve cheese or eggs, neither of which appeal to me in casserole form (the ‘Marrow Savoury’ looked ok but I couldn’t find a marrow..)

So I delved into the meat chapters, and contemplated Beef Cobbler, Canadian Steak, Crusty Beef Stew, Priest’s Goulash, Veal Marengo, Pork and Quince Casserole, Kidney Espagnole, Liver Bonne Femme, Braised Sheep’s Tongues, Hacienda Chicken, Braised Grouse, Pigeon with Cherries, Cod Bolognese and Casseroled Eels before finally settling on Spicy Lamb Hot Pot, as this sounded quite easy.

Spicy Lamb Hot Pot (4 portions)

1.5-2lb of best end neck lamb

1oz fat

2 medium sized onions, peeled and chopped

1/2 clove garlic

1-2 sticks celery, chopped

3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon mixed spice

2oz rice

stock or water

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

salt, pepper

1. Trim meat, remove excess fat and cut into pieces.

2. Heat fat and brown meat, then put into a casserole.

3. Add onion and garlic to remaining fat and fry till lightly browned. Put with meat.

4. Add remaining vegetables and spices.

5. Wash rice and mix with other ingredients.

6. Add stock or water to barely cover.

7. Cover and cook in a slow oven (350F/ Gas Mark 2) for about 2 hours.

8. Correct seasoning before serving and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

The results

Notes etc

• It was delicious – lovely soft meat, fairly subtle seasoning, and nicely done veg, and a good sauce
• I’ve never cooked with neck of lamb before, and I’d definitely do it again. My local organic butcher was only able to give me 3/4lb of it though, so I actually made half this amount.
• I forgot the green pepper, so I doubled the celery and chucked an extra tomato in (I don’t actually like cooked peppers that much, so I think my subconscious made me ‘forget’ it).
• I forgot to peel the tomato.
• I didn’t add salt or pepper, as I don’t usually feel I need it.
• I used water, as I haven’t made any stock lately.
• I put the oven at 150c as a guess, cos I didn’t have the laptop on to convert from fahrenheit – this is actually a bit lower than the instructions. However I managed to knock the dial up to 200c for about 30 mins before I noticed – I was concerned this might dry it out but instead it added some nice lightly browned bits to the meat.

Conclusion

Would definitely make this again – it was stupidly easy to prepare, and yielded a big dish full of hearty hearty stew. The ‘Spicy’ of the name is misleading as it’s as mild as can be, which could be expected from something with hardly any spices in! It’s also shown me that less obvious cuts of meat can be as tasty and easy to find as the ones you get down the supermarket.

Cooked by Alix

Javanese Bamie

I picked up this book on Saturday from a charity shop in Kilburn. It’s called Simple Oriental Cookery and it’s from 1960, published by Peter Pauper Press and compiled by Edna Beilenson (a quick search reveals that similar titles exist for a range of other cuisines, Beilenson was fairly prolific, it would appear!). It features recipes from China, Japan, Indonesia, Hawaii, India and the Near East, and is a whistlestop tour of basic food from these areas. It has amazing bold pictures like these, by Ruth McCrea (my searches also show that there is a book called The ABC of Cocktails by McCrea from 1962, which, if it’s got illustrations like these, is a seriously tempting purchase..)

Tonight I decided to make something from it for dinner. I wanted something simple and the recipe for Javanese Bamie fitted the bill. It’s a very straightforward veg, beansprout, shrimp and pork noodle dish – although on looking up Javanese food on Wikipedia it says that, what with most Javanese people being Muslim, pork isn’t found in their food, so I suspect that the recipe book has muddled Java with somewhere else (or Islam hadn’t reached Java in 1960?). Googling ‘bamie’ doesn’t come up with anything Java specific; instead the results tend to suggest the dish is Balinese or Indonesian generally rather than Javanese (there’s even one result which suggests Surinam). I guess it’s probably generally Indonesian, and can be made with things other than pork. ‘Bamee’ would appear to be something to do with Thai noodles, so perhaps this is an alternate spelling. But let’s not get muddled up in comparative linguistics. It’ll only end in tears. Here’s the recipe:

Javanese Bamie (serves 4)

4 pork chops

4 onions

1 bunch scallions

Garlic, crushed

1 bunch parsley

1 white cabbage (small)

1 bunch celery

1 can beansprouts

1/2 pound shrimp

soy sauce

1/2 pound noodles

1 lemon

4 eggs

Cut all ingredients, meat included, into small pieces. Fry the pork squares until dark brown, fry the onions separately, put the together in a heavy skillet, add crushed garlic, then the other vegetables and the shrimp, and add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Do not cook too long.

Cook the noodles and add these last. Serve with pieces of lemon and top each individual plate with fried egg.

Here’s what it looked like (apologies for the quality of the photos in this post; I am not skill with a camera):

Notes and observations

• Pork does not turn dark brown when fried! I slow fried the cubes then drained off the liquid and let them go a bit almost burnt (ha, ‘let them’. It was an accident). The meat was quite dry/ chewy unsurprisingly. I think it would benefit from marinading for a bit in something beforehand.
• I forgot to buy noodles so these weren’t included, oops.
• Hot celery is a bit ugh.
• I halved the amounts as I only wanted to make 2 portions, but it still made at least 3 meals and that was without the noodles.
• Soy sauce was the only seasoning – this dish could be livened up with ginger/ coriander and shitloads more garlic (I used 3 cloves and could barely taste it).
• Scallions are spring onions!
• I don’t know what a skillet is and I certainly don’t have one, so used a frying pan (Google image search suggests this for ‘skillet‘, I doubt they would be hugely receptive to any attempt to cook in them. Also, who still looks like that? It’s not 1998 anymore).
• Pretty much any foodstuff (and sometimes non-foodstuffs) is improved by the addition of a fried egg on top. I suspect I shall repeat this assertion as time goes by. It will remain true.
• I burnt the egg too. And the yolk ran. I know I know I know. I can’t even fry an egg!

VERDICT

It tasted ok. Nothing special, but a nice enough week night dinner. I can see myself cooking it again but trying out more seasoning, marinading the meat and perhaps using chicken or beef to try to combat the dryness of the meat.
Cooked by Alix